MEDIA; Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories

Sometime, somewhere, some anthropologist must have explored that tribal ritual: the greatest-hits list. These lists date back at least to the seven wonders of the ancient world. They reflect the importance of some area of tribal endeavor -- monumental architecture, say, or rock-and-roll. And they establish hierarchies; how better to show your pre-eminence in the pecking order than to rank everyone else?

Journalists, trained to make their value judgments in neat pyramid style, most important facts first, could hardly be expected to resist the millennial listing urge. If Modern Library can cause a stir with its list of 100 best novels and the Rock-and- Roll Hall of Fame can take abuse for its top 500, why shouldn't journalists share in the fun?

So, within four days of each other, come two 100-best-of-the-century lists of journalists, by journalists, for journalists. One, done under the aegis of the Freedom Forum's Newseum, came out last week and ranks the best news stories of the century. (It can be found at www.newseum.org.) The second, under the aegis of New York University's journalism department, ranks the best works of 20th-century American journalism.

Listing, of course, involves its own ritual behavior. First, members of the tribe read the list. Then they attack it. Like this: The Newseum's 67 judges collectively put the discovery of the Nazi death camps at No. 7, behind the Wright Brothers' first flight (No. 4). The massacres in Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda don't appear. Neither does the Iranian revolution or anything connected to religion -- unless you consider Communism its own kind of religion.

In some ways, the two lists converge: the No. 1 news event on the Newseum's list is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; the No. 1 work of journalism on N.Y.U.'s list is John Hersey's ''Hiroshima.'' The 1940's and 1960's dominate both lists. Events of those years held 39 of the 100 spots on the Newseum's list. N.Y.U.'s list included 43 works of journalism that were published in those decades.

But in the end, the difference between the two lists parallels the difference between a great headline and a wonderfully turned piece of writing. Both take skill and thought, spiced with arbitrariness and whimsy. But it's hard to linger over headlines.

The N.Y.U. list includes events that were important mostly because of who was watching. The documentary film maker Frederick Wiseman's ''Titicut Follies,'' (1967, No. 56) about the dehumanization of inmates in an institution for the criminally insane, speaks as eloquently about the bizarre cruelty of indifference as other journalists have spoken about the bizarre cruelty of war.

''This kind of list is needed in journalism,'' said Mitchell Stephens, the chairman of the N.Y.U. department. ''People have their own lists of the best novels or the best songs. But journalism doesn't get thought of that way. Nobody thinks of journalism in terms of decades or centuries.''

Jeff Greenfield of CNN, one of the judges, said: ''The cliche of journalism is that it is a first rough draft of history. This makes you go back and look at what journalistic works endure and why.''

Some of the works show off muscular reporting, the kind that moves history -- the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post (1973, No. 3) or Seymour Hersh's account of the My Lai massacre (1969, No. 12) for Dispatch News Service. Some show the arc of history: a troika of works cover the rise and fall of Soviet Communism, from John Reed's ''Ten Days That Shook The World'' (1919, No. 7) to Harrison Salisbury's Moscow correspondence for The New York Times (1949-54, No. 52)) to David Remnick's book ''Lenin's Tomb.'' (1993, No. 57).

And some are windows on the passions that animated an era, from Ida Tarbell's ''History of the Standard Oil Company'' (1902-1904, No. 5) to John Steinbeck's reporting on Okie migrant camps in California (1936, No. 31) to Hannah Arendt's coverage of the Eichmann trial (1963, No. 20). Other works helped ignite passions, like Huynh Cong Ut's photograph of a naked, napalmed girl in Vietnam (1972, No. 41).

And all are windows on the values of the 16 women and 21 men who sat in judgment, from Stanley Crouch of The Daily News to Mary McGrory of The Washington Post to Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal. For Mr. Stephens, the final value of the list is what it says about the role of the craft in making people see themselves. ''You can see the 20th century understanding itself through its journalism,'' he said.

That said, here's the final tribal ritual, the agate-type list that starts all the arguments:

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A version of this list appears in print on March 1, 1999, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: MEDIA; Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe